So let's talk about population
Posted by Stuart Staniford on December 20, 2005 - 2:57am
Topic: Sociology/Psychology
Tags: hubbert peak, oil prices, peak oil, population [list all tags]
UN population projections through 2050. Click to enlarge. The medium scenario (dark green) is the UN's best guess as to what will happen. High and Low represent their best estimates of the range of reasonably likely outcomes. The Constant Fertility line is their estimate of what would happen if world average fertility did not decline any further. Source: World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision.
Growth of human population since AD 0. Click to enlarge. Source: US Census Bureau. Also here -- my graph before 1900 is an average of the McEvedy/Jones and the Biraben estimates. After 1900 I use the UN numbers.
To understand population growth, you need to know a little bit about how the demographers think about the world. Human population growth is sort-of-exponential, but not really. It's sort-of exponential in that the rate of change of the population is sort-of proportional to the number of people now. The more people, the more kids they can have, other things being equal. However, other things are not equal, and so the rate of population growth varies over time, and thus the graph doesn't follow an exponential curve with much precision. In fact, the growth above is mostly super-exponential - the growth rate increased over time until quite recently:
Population growth rate since AD 0. Click to enlarge. Source: Interpolated approximately from population figures in prior graph.
The population growth rate is controlled by two things: the number of babies born each year as a proportion of the people currently alive (known as the crude birth rate), and the number of people who die each year (known as the crude death rate). These can be illustrated as we look at the most important concept in demography: the demographic transition. Here's data for Sweden, for illustration.
CBR = Crude Birth Rate (blue), and CDR = Crude Death Rate (red) rates in Sweden. Click to enlarge. Source: The Demographic Transition, Keith Montgomery.
The general idea is that in undeveloped countries, both birth rates and death rates are high. Development first causes a decline in the death rates, due to improved public health and sanitation, antibiotics, etc, etc. At first, birth rates don't come down and the population thus grows. Later, birth rates begin to come down also, and the population stabilizes with both fertility and mortality at low levels. Like pretty much all developed countries, Sweden completed it's demographic transition gradually and has largely finished. Most developed countries are now at population stability, and some, like Italy and Germany, even have fertility substantially below replacement level and are likely to have shrinking populations in the future.
The UN divides countries into three groups, which are politely named "more developed" (places like the US, Western Europe, and Japan), "less developed" (India, China, Mexico, Brazil, etc), and "least developed" (Afghanistan, Niger, Botswana, etc). The following graph looks at mortality and fertility data for the the less developed countries (excluding the least developed).
Birth and Death rates for UN less developed countries (excluding least developed). The lines through 2000 are data, and after that the lines are the UN's medium projection. Source: World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision.
Now, this group of countries - generally the better-off developing countries - comprised 59% of world population as of 2000. Several things stand out from the graph:
- The demographic transition is well under way in these countries. Death rates fell early in the twentieth century, are continuing to fall, but are stabilizing. All of that "Save the Children" activity has worked to a considerable degree. Birth rates have also fallen significantly, but there is a big gap between births and deaths still, which accounts for the enormous population growth in these countries.
- The demographic transition is happening much faster in this group of countries than the centuries-long process in the developed countries.
- The UN's medium projection assumes a business-as-usual continuation of the same trends in these countries that have enabled the demographic transition to date.
The next graph shows the exact same thing, on the same scale, for the UN "least developed" countries (mostly poor African and a few exceptionally poor Asian countries).
Birth and Death rates for UN least developed countries. The lines through 2000 are data, and after that the lines are the UN's medium projection. Source: World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision.
These countries comprised 11% of the world's population as of 2000, but are obviously increasing their share at a good clip. They are much less far along in their demographic transition, and have huge gaps between births and deaths, hence the large population growth rates. The UN is projecting that they will, nonetheless, go through the transition. What the modelers basically do is take a composite average profile of countries that have gone through the transition in the not-too-distant past, and assume these countries will follow the same path.
Just to complete the story, here's the final 20% of the world's year 2000 population in the UN's more developed countries. These are the countries that have more-or-less completed their demographic transition.
Birth and Death rates for UN more developed countries. The lines through 2000 are data, and after that the lines are the UN's medium projection. Source: World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision.
All in all, the UN medium projection strikes me as generally plausible if one assumes that demographic change plays out while holding geology and economics on a steady business-as-usual course. Alas, with peak oil, most of us don't believe in that assumption set. Thus we are left to wonder how those dotted lines for the developing countries might really evolve in a post peak world. Certainly there is not enough oil for them to end up looking like the developed countries that have just completed their demographic transitions in recent decades. As we can see further in this next graph, population growth rate has a good deal to do with affluence. Wealthy countries (high GDP/capita) tend to have low population growth rates, and poor ones tend to have high rates. The most obvious exceptions are oil exporters which presumably tend to function like a poor country with a small super-rich elite grafted on.
Population growth rate against log GDP/capita. Source: Demographic Transition: An Historical Sociological Perspective, David Allan.
The situation is even clearer if we look at fertility alone - total fertility is the expected number of children a woman will have over her lifetime.
Total fertility (children/woman) against log GDP/capita. Source: Demographic Transition: An Historical Sociological Perspective, David Allan.
Now, if we think there's a near term peak, even if it's soft as I argued from this graph the other day:
Hubbert-style prediction of future global oil production decline rates, together with recent year-on-year change in BP production data (inc NGLs), and a linear fit to the BP data.
Barrels/capita of world population assuming a Hubbert curve with URR=2350gb, peak = 2005, and K=5%, together with the UN medium population growth curve.
Annual growth/decline in barrels/capita assuming a Hubbert curve with URR=2350gb, peak = 2005, and K=5%, together with the UN medium population growth curve.
Finally, I'd like to mention some resources on population issues besides the UN report. There's a superb set of lectures from the Global Change Program at the University of Michigan. Another nice online discussion is by Keith Montgomery. There's a book How Many People Can The Earth Support, by Joel Cohen. This book is an incredible piece of scholarship, and while I don't agree with all of it, it's must reading for anyone wanting to understand the issues. Finally, I'll mention The Rapid Growth of Human Populations 1750-2000 by William Stanton. Despite his deplorable politics, it's the most peak-oil aware population book I know of, and does have a lot of interesting data and discussion on individual countries. Then there's the classic Limits to Growth series, and Catton's Overshoot. The case for why no-one should worry about population growth has been made by the late Julian Simon, an economist, in The Ultimate Resource 2. I can't say I found this book very well argued, but I'm not aware of a better argued version of the same thesis elsewhere - certainly this is the famous one.
I once travelled through Java, Indonesia. The lasting impression of the trip was the insane amount of people everywhere- it seemed completely unsutainable, and it probably is.
Total world fish catch peaked 1989.
Total world grain production peaked 2000.
http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~pel/environment/population_pt04.html
http://faostat.fao.org/
Grain Yields Rise, But No Respite for the Hungry
grain In 2004, global grain production broke 2 billion tons for the first time in history, marking a 9-percent increase from the 2003 level. Also in 2004, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of hungry people around the world increased for the first time since 1970. Starvation now kills more than 5 million children each year.
The biggest factor behind this record grain production in 2004 was an increase in average yields: with the same amount of hectares for planting, farmers were able to harvest more crops. However, most people go hungry not because of a global food shortage but because they are too poor to buy food or to obtain the land, water, and other resources needed to produce it.
Vital Signs
This is a pdf file or purchase. 96 to 03 leveling off re grain production. 85 peak per person, but fairly level. Of concern is grain stocks decreasing since 60, possibly by choice. The tractor, irrigation, chemical fertilizeres/pesticides/herbicides and some hybrid grains, particularily rice are how we have matched hyper-expotiental growth. All these are so oil/gas dependant. The 2005 grain increase was a good year probably due to weather ,good in the right places.
One of the largest problems is not peak oil making fuel for growing food scarse in itself but the scarsity making it easier to start conflicts. Wars eat resources and is in the way for distribution and trade and that gives starvation.
The political risks worry me more then the physical problems.
When I was in the 9th grade my Geography teacher give us this table with world population figures since 1500 and ask us to plot it in a blank sheet. Amazing! That line suddenly went out of the paper!
Later we studied the problems of ageing population in Europe, and the efforts governments where doing in changing that (like subsidies that afford for a woman with more than 2 kids to leave work). Wait a minute! Where will that line go? What appends outside the paper sheet?
By then oil was a very frail word to me, and peak wasn't in my dictionary. Things are much clear now. Population is a key variable in the Peak Oil issue, demographic growth has fed on Oil, and consequently pushed Oil consumption. That's the reason of the hyper-exponential growth where the growth rate also growths exponentially.
As long we have population growth, we have Oil demand growth, simply because we feed on Oil. I don't know where this will lead us, but we surely have a time bomb in our hands.
Stuart please continue this analysis, try to give us an insight on the Easter Island.
There is however one difference that I think is qualitative and goes to the heart of the discussions on this (rather excellent) site:
Humans are the only animals that have worked out how to metabolise energy outside our bodies. And that's why we've managed to get so out of whack with the rest of the ecosystem.
This can be a fascinating topic for discussion, but it can be politicized very easily. I belong to four energy-related Yahoo forums, and discussing population curve matching to the Hubbert downslope can lead to quite contentious arguments, and the creation of a zillion off-shooting threads. I urge all posters to consider their words carefully and leave your egos off-screen. Then we all can learn together.
I, among others some time back, started a discussion of ASPO newsletter #55, item 573 "Oil and People", whereby the author: William Stanton's essay is about reducing population in step with oil depletion. It was unbelievable: the amount of discussion generated, both pro & con, when BOTH PARTS of the Thermo-Gene Collision come together into a 'critical mass' for debate. There were so many postings that it was hard work to keep track of all the topic directions. I hope the same can happen here.
I suggest a moderator might be needed for this topic. Jay Hanson, and helpful others, already had many years of practice to hone their moderating techniques at Yahoo.
The graph showing pop. shooting to near 7 billion since we discovered fossil fuels tells it all. If Humanity can somehow finesse pop. curve matching to the energy downslope without huge levels of violence, it will be amazing.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
=================I would like the discussion not to go right down to reduction. I'd prefer a few more posts before that. Personally I do not believe in that finesse, around here we've been working with cellular automata and some time ago we've tried some populations models. There's grass and little beings that eat grass. If grass can regenerate fast enough, population will follow a logistic curve and stabilize, if not, population will grow to a peak and suddenly fall way below carrying capacity.
No one has ever seen oil regenerating itself (perhaps except Mr. Corsi).
It was only after I had studied Dieoff.org for awhile that I realized Jay's incredible website boiled down to entropy as explained by the Laws of Thermodynamics, and human behavior, in all aspects, are in constant collision as explained by Darwinism. I merely coined the term: Thermo-Gene Collision, as a concise encapsulation of the Total Equation as explained by Jay's Magnum Opus. Full credit to Jay for pulling it all together as evidenced by the hundreds of pages on Dieoff.com, and his years of Internet discussion.
Fossil fuel discussion, such as here on the OilDrum, generally talks about the Thermo-half and ignores, or overlooks the Gene-half repercussions. That is why I was glad to see a population thread on this site. I am a hardcore Doomer, but I hope some mitigation can be achieved by the world becoming Dieoff aware, then agreeing to new behavioral changes such as a widely accepted one child policy.
ASPO's Oil Depletion Protocol is a good example of focusing only on the Thermo-half. Now we need to generate a matching Gene-half so the whole equation and the long term view is considered. Is William Stanton's proposal in ASPO Newsletter #55, item 573 the best method? I have no idea, but it seems like an excellent start. How do we get universal discussion and political action jumpstarted when the politicos and Media are not screaming for everyone to study Dieoff.com? How can we get Peakoil deniers to come to their senses? Can it be done in time to avert violent catastrophes?
If the proles become Dieoff aware and encourage their leaders to implement beneficial policies for everyone's welfare, then the energy downslope will not be that big a deal. If not, then I predict the depletion rate will be near 10% yearly, and all hell will break loose. A proactive response is far better than a convulsive reactive response. The elites will have to take drastic measures if the proles cannot get their act together.
Most political discussions I have participated in eventually breakdown to every man for himself. This is not a solution, but an admission of political failure, and a willingness to accept anarchy and violence. I think some kind of common ground can be achieved. Time will tell.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
================You call beefing up capital punishment, and euthanizing the retarded, elderly and handicapped, an "excellent start"?
Dieoff suggests 95% plus of us will die if we do nothing. If we are smarter than yeast, we have to do something. A planned powerdown with voluntary birth control and voluntary Euthanasia is far better than the 'every man for himself' mindset. Man is a political animal: we CAN come up with some kind of mitigation, but it won't be easy.
Your thinking could result in the wrong mix of people to row. Imagine a selfish older man who knocks a fit teenager overboard to guarantee himself the last rowing seat. His singular action has just Doomed the entire rowboat because he will be exhausted long before shore is reached vs the teenager's greater energy reserves.
Perhaps his thinking could, but so could yours. How do you decide who is the fittest? Are you sure that your fitness function will lead to increased survival? What if you're wrong? The fact is that you have no idea how one individual will really affect the groups survival.
Take your example. You throw the older man overboard and keep the teenager. You lose the old guy's knowledge about all kinds of things that would contribute to the survival of the group. The teenager ends up being a lazy loud-mouth who instigates fights in the group. You all die. Sucks being you.
The truth is that there is simply no good way of choosing who lives or dies in such a situation. Voluntary birth control is an acceptable (for some) way of lessening the problem before it occurs. Voluntary euthanasia is probably the least objectionable way of coping as it occurs. After that, you might as well pick names out of a hat or let nature take its course. Frankly, my vote is for nature because I think I'm a lot more prepared than your average Joe, and I see no reason that I shouldn't benefit for making myself so.
I believe there are too many people, but don't know how many we can support. Nor do I know how quickly we would have to reduce to avoid disaster. To make a decision that others must die requires absolute certainty, which cannot be achieved. I think that all such logic is just using a difficult situation as an excuse to justify aggressive behaviors. What's next - should we go hunt down anyone who does not meet our criteria for being fit enough to survive? Wouldn't want them to drag us down now would we? There is no way to make a line of separation once you start down that slope.
Far better to find ways to reward lower birth rates (birth control, people!), and help each other survive. You may be helping out someone who will do you a good turn later, or perhaps that person will turn out to be key in our survival somehow. I'll bet on the lesson of history, which is that those societies that can work together collectively, cooperatively, and sustainably will have an advantage in survival. People have mentioned the Amish - from what I know, they aggregate a large portion of their wealth (both of money and labor), as opposed to keeping it within individual families. This is a big part of their strength - they do not operate alone.
I find it greatly disturbing when people use a crisis to abandon any pretense of morality.
It was decided that three large Arcs were to be built which would carry the whole population across the galaxy to find a new planet for them to colonise. In the `A Arc' would go all the leaders, the brilliant scientists, the great thinkers and clever politicians, in the `C Arc' would go all the doers, the builders and fabricators, the people who made things. The `B Arc' would therefore carry all the middlemen such as telephone sanitisers and management consultants.
As I recall there were also a lot of hair dressers and insurance salesmen, probably a fairly well-educated bunch.
Anyway, the plan involved the building of the B Arc first. All the 'middle' people were rounded up and sent off to find a new home, oblivious to the fact that the A and C Arcs would never be built.
I find this way of deciding who lives and who dies very clever, despite my belief that my B.Arch. would put me in the B Arc. Someone has already complained that the C Arc folk are breeding faster than the A and B Arc folks, so perhaps we should send them away first. But then who would do the work? A case could clearly be made to send away the A Arc folks, too, since they led us into this mess. Sending away Daniel Yergin, Prince Ali al-Naimi and Dick Cheney sounds about right, but we'd probably lose our great thinker, Stuart, too.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
==================Just one possible scenerio: Selfish Old man, Has knowledge to feed the people, and that by the time they reach shore he has thought of his mistake at killing the young man, and decided to help his fellow passegers and show them all the fruits of the land that he knows so much about.
BUT As an above poster said, WE have no formal way of choosing the survivers and have only had a few tid bits of it in some good Psychology Courses. Man Has never been good at choosing the survivers. Some History Lovers have gone back and pulled apart history and saved through Fiction the ones that died early.
I guess my heart is in this issue a lot more than most of you, I have a retarded cousin, ( He has an excelent memeroy for anything he sees, or reads, but is still retarded in the ways we judge mental ability). My second Wife was in a Car accident that nearly killed her but didn't and By God's Grace she walked again, But for all practical purposes she is listed as handicapped.
What would you do, take out all obese people too, ( there goes america ) , Or all under fed? IT's the old thing of who is making the choices, and are you going to get a population faced with this sort of thing to actually stand still and let it happen?
I doubt it, I think that it will be the basis for the next major crisis, if someone were to go and plan to take out the unfit from those that are fit to live. Baseball bats and and riot gear thats how your scenerio would end.
Most humans don't willingly die to save another. It's not in our nature.
Your row boat would end in a lot of fighting, the "30 to 45" left get to row to shore.
Where are from man?
I'll get into Dieoff.org to understand those concepts. I share your visions on politics, the current dominant economic/political thinking is not prepared for this huge problem. The political systems of most states of Europe, North America, and spreading elsewhere are based on a bourgeois democracy shielded by an ultra-liberal economic agenda. This mainly translates to "Every Man For Himself".
This system might have worked inn the first half of the oil age, but it won't in the second. The liberal thinking will lead to the "Dariwnistic" reduction of population and resource consumption. A completely different political system would be required for a "Draconian" reduction.
Of course, I'm no devilish fascist. I just don't know which way is worse, Simply let the strong overcome the weak, or politely help the weak overcoming themselves. This thoughts make me torn inside.
"...and remember, Survival means:
Every Man For Himself
Himself
Statistically more people survive if they think only of themselves.
Do not attempt to rescue friends, relatives, or loved ones.
You have only a few seconds to escape
Use those seconds sensibly or you will inevitably die..."
Robert Calvert
If not capital-H Humanity, then who? Jay Hanson wrote that when the crisis hits, the elites will decimate the world population with a bioweapon. Who are the elites? Can we answer that?
Some of you think as I do.
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple"
-Oscar Wilde
- laziness is anticonspirational
- humanity has been around social systems long enough to have learned that spending increasing amounts of energy on control of complex system like social networks results in steeply diminishing returns and ultimately systems collapse
- social systems are of evolutionary/biological origin and are energy efficient down to molecular levels to a degree we can't fathom yet. They don't lend themselves to waste. Now don't get this wrong, they can certainly waste energy as system output but the workings of the system itself are highly efficient, have to be after a few billion years.
So if social privileges can be maintained without conspirational efforts they will be. 100% guaranteed. One of the most disturbing comments I have come across in the 'elite' preparation for PO is that 'we might be beyond the point where it is profitable to do any mitigation'.Thanks for your comments Isaiah.
the elite aren't lazy. why? because they have too much to lose. do you think corporate execs, political leaders, and central banksters are going to sit around being lazy when their empires go down in flames? the institutions they run (transnational corporations, which are legal psychopaths, private central banks, which manipulate money supplies and credit, and political states that demolish human/civil rights and disempower the people) are tyrannical and oppressive, no matter who is at the helm. we don't need a "conspiracy" theory, we just need to understand how history has worked and continues to work. did the monarchy, the Church, imperialism/colonialism, slavery, and other means to control and oppress the masses for centuries require a "conspiracy"?
the legal definition of conspiracy is simply: An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action. sounds like that happens all the time. in devastation there is opportunity. great opportunity.
i have no idea what you mean about social systems being efficient down to a molecular level. how can you relate efficiency to a social organization? it's also ridiculous to think that social systems are purely biological/evolutionary in origin. this sort of reductive analysis will end in failure as sociology, culture and history cannot be described in such terms. not only is biology horrendously inefficient (e.g. photosynthesis is about 0.1% efficient in tranforming solar energy to chemical energy, and a factor of 10 loss in energy results from each further level of consumption) but social systems are meant (theoretically) to promote community and quality of life. this has nothing to do with efficiency, which smacks of individual subjugation for greater production and consumption (read: 1984).